


Blast

by peterspajamas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Spider-Man: Homecoming, Drowning, Gen, Misunderstandings, Near Death Experiences, Peter Parker Whump, Whump, i guess?, yes it's peter drowning during the ferry scene im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29954061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterspajamas/pseuds/peterspajamas
Summary: Peter's in the middle of an operation- a whole ferry operation- when he gets an ill timed call from Tony Stark.That leads him into scrambling to lie, which leads him into hanging up, which Mr. Stark doesn't much like. And then- and then, he falls under the ferry, the tidal pull of the waves cutting off the phone and his likeliest chance of rescue.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46
Collections: 2021 Irondad Sprint Event





	Blast

**Author's Note:**

> if you see me posting irondad and you're from the supernatural fandom this isn't FOR you, go away! go away! 
> 
> anyway these were the prompts we were given: so i decided to post a drowning wip they fit pretty well!!! i tried to make peter funny and kind of a dick because i vibe with it lol   
> Trap-Floor  
> Instability  
> Cracked  
> Plummet  
> Double-Vision  
> Eyes Open  
> Dark  
> Tachycardia  
> Hoarse   
> Numb

Here’s the situation, as Peter sees it: A collection of weapons, an unnamed supervillain, they’re posing a danger to New York and he’s tired of feeling in the way. Last time he saw the aftermath of one of those…. Let’s just say he knows they’re disastrous. 

And it gives him the same sick feeling he fets whenever anyone mentions Ben. Perks of- of all this, he can stop these same situations from happening again. He cracks a nervous smile that rings false, slowly crawling down the white pole of the ferry. The water swirls a dirty gray behind them as they chug through the water. He can hear people moving around above him. 

“Call incoming, Peter.” 

“What?” he asks, like an idiot, focus broken for now. “What do you mean?” 

“Mr. Stark is calling. Answering.” 

“Stop right there,” Peter orders. The call goes through. He feels lightheaded, now, and it’s not from hanging upside down. “Fuck you,” he hisses quietly. “Hey, Mr. Stark, what’s up?” He clears his throat, proud of the way he doesn’t sound like Mrs. Agethe’s chickens on the roof. Annoying, noisy, high pitched to the point where you start to wonder if they’re being tortured up there. 

“Where are you, kid? Huh? What are you doing?” Mr. Stark asks him impatiently. His heart clenches. 

“Nothing,” he says, raising his eyebrows. The deal is going down, it looks like. He better get into it.    
  


“Nothing? Nothing? Then where are you?” 

Peter cocks his head, peering down the length of the car park of the ferry, upside down. His hands are anxiously sweaty-  _ stupid _ \- and Mr. Stark is disappointed in him. Does he know it for sure? No, of course not, but.. But. “Band practice,” he lies, hoping for believability. 

It rings false. “You quit band a few months ago. Where are you really?” Mr. Stark asks coldly. 

Oh. Oh- hell.  _ Frick.  _ That’s a helluva gun, Peter thinks, getting a closer look. “Patrolling,” he says quietly, focused more on the activities below than Mr. Stark’s increasingly annoyed attention. “Patrolling around the city.”

“Don’t lie, kid.”

Peter freezes up. It’s when the first parts of a deal start to go down below him. ‘“nd call. End call, Karen,” he says, still distracted, and swings down to stop it. The fighting for the next few minutes is all he can think of, magnetic next to his mind of iron, all the little parts working together to cling to the fight. To cling to survival. 

“Call incoming, Peter.” Oh  _ no _ . His heart squeezes with nerves as he stands there, the Shocker disabled and two others webbed up. 

“Thanks for hanging up on me,” Mr. Stark tells him icily. But Peter’s mind is elsewhere. On the weapons. And- 

And Peter’s attention is divided by his clamoring heart beating soundly in his chest and the fact that he is scared to tears. Completely and nauseatingly terrified. That’s when the loud clang echoes through the ferry. Beneath his mask, he’s sweating like crazy. “Come on, kid,” the man growls. 

He’s balding, sinister and his narrowed eyes somehow seem more dangerous than any single one of the weapons scattered on the deck. Peter swallows painfully, flinching as he hears the crack of a door opening. 

“Freeze! FBI”’ A ton of agents seem to pour out of the doors, everywhere, guns out. 

Peter’s mouth forms an O and he puts his hands up as they round on him. “What? The FBI-”

“The FBI?” Peter pales at Tony’s impatient tone of voice. “What the hell are you doing near the FBI? You didn’t-” Would he just shut up already? 

“The FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Peter-” Karen’s voice cancels out as he hears a whir. The cars are shoved to the side. 

“Oh! Oh-  _ get out of the way! _ -” he screams, pulling two confused agents with him. The wings swoop through the tunnel, and he thinks… he thinks,  _ this is going to get nasty _ . 

The next few minutes are a blur. He tries to tackle the wings by himself, but they are sharp and powerful and all he has are webs. Useless webs. Even the electric ones do nothing. He’s working on adrenaline, fear vision clouding over as he scrambles around, panic clogging his throat. He doesn’t register the words, but something the man- the Vulture- says as he leaves stands out. “You’re messing with things you don’t understand,” he says to Peter, sneering.

“I’m sure you think that!” Peter replies, eyes darting to the man’s hands.  _ Clang _ . A bright purple light lands on the floor, rolling to a stop. As quick as he can, he surrounds the danger with webs, terrified it’s going to blow. 

“What the fuck is going on!” Tony roars. Peter flinches at the noise, watching the purple light swathed in webs shake. Again: shut the fuck up, Stark. 

“Fu- oh no,” he says, voice trembling as even more desperately, he tries to web everything up. 

Gosh. That’s a powerful gun, Peter’s brain tells him as he leaps out of its way. A bright white web shoots around it and the weapon blares light, cutting like laser through the ferry. “What?” he breathes, panting hard and scrambling around as it cuts. And cuts. And cuts.

“Tell me what is happening, Parker!” Mr. Stark growls. Peter’s ears ring from the noise bu he jerks into the air again, nausea roiling along in his stomach. 

“Attach your webs to these key points,” Karen drones over the noise and he follows her instructions, hands slipping on sweat. The webshooters on his wrists tug at the fabric. He’s afraid it will rip. 

“Do you understand what you just did?” Tony tells him, every word a pointed cut to his already bleeding arms. He shakes his head,  _ no _ , as if force of will alone will stop the apocalyptic scene surrounding him. 

He’s dead center at the action, arms straining. “I’m handling it-”

Mr. Stark is nothing like the witty, cocksure man in the car, nothing like the scolding, knowing suit with the empty eyes, nothing like how he is on TV screens or in YouTube videos- he’s  _ livid _ . “What are you doing?” he yells. “You’re killing them, Parker, they’re going to die,” he says loudly. Another knot of web attaches itself to the ferry. 

“I have it under control,” Peter stutters, craning his neck to watch the Shocker, the- the guy, whoever it was, scramble along the deck of the boat, further and further away from Peter. “Stay out of it!” he snaps.

“No,  _ you don’t _ !” Tony retorts. He’s on the move and Peter feels sick to his stomach. He’s here to save people, here to make memories proud, and the irrational, miserable panic scrabbling at him is the least of his worries. The disappointment from letting Stark down can come later.

“I gotta go,” Peter stammers, shaking his head like it’ll help the cotton in his ears clear. “Karen, kick him- I gotta go, Mr. Stark, I can’t do this-” And the phone hangs up.

People are screaming. It’s all he can hear. He’s so confused, it’s hell on his ears and his eyes are at their breaking point as his shaking hands try to put his mess back together. “Karen”’ he shrieks, hand slipping. The flames lick around him and he holds his burning arms in place. “Karen,  _ help _ ,” he cries, tears forming in his eyes as his chest shakes from the breath. 

It’s then that the web breaks. He howls as he plunges into the icy cold water. For a few panicked seconds, all he can do is try not to cough. Hot and miserable tears well in his eyes. “Call---mi---” Karen’s static tells him, but all he can do is wave his arms. 

The ferry closes shut above him. The sides push together. And he watches, arms shaking and broken. He tries to swim upwards but there has to be some sort of vacuum under here, holding him, and he holds his breath, lungs tearing apart. “---Stark------inco----” Karen tries to tell him again.

Everything drops off. Noise, senses, smell. Just black water, the distant sharp glint of a rudder. His hands move through the water. One of them closes around his wrist, which is soft, and warm. 

He’s upside down, head sinking before anything. Numb, freezing cold, trying hard not to choke. Head plummeting, down, down to the floor of the ocean. The water’s cold. It swirls around him and he closes his eyes. It doesn’t make much of a difference. 

It’s all dark. The warmth in his hands is starting to fade, as he drops deeper, deeper. He’s dying here; alone. The freeze swarms him, attacking on all sides. One of his feet kicks out a little. His head swims. Peter didn’t think- this morning, he didn’t wake up thinking this would be the end. 

Part of him is confused by it. Part of him is numb. He didn’t think Ben would die, a thousand mornings ago, and now chance is making its break again. They call them freak accidents, what- what will they call this? Will New York mourn him like a hero? 

How many minutes does it take to drown? Peter knows it’s something like 5. It’s already been one. His teeth chatter and he finally sobs, curling into his chest. The pressure of the water is battering him now. His hand shakes. He sees it there, in the water, red, and Peter’s lungs are crushing in on themselves. The pain grows. Everything is vivid, down here, as his useless eyes peer into the black. 

Is New York going to mourn him? Is May? The physical sobs begin to crunch into him, but he keeps his mouth firmly shut, even as he trembles. Peter is just- it all happened so quick. For a moment, he had thought the disappointment, the fury of Mr. Stark would be the worst part of this day. 

But no. Death staked her claim, instead. He closes his eyes. It’s so cold down here, down, it’s dark, it’s- he’s not, he  _ doesn’t want _ …

Every little whimper he lets out is swallowed by water, clinging to him like his skin used to cling to his bones. Muscle does nothing, he can’t even kick out, he’s just rolling down to the deepest beds of the ocean now. Salt prods at his lips. He doesn’t know up from down, anymore, can’t actually tell where he is. 

Peter’s left the vacuum left behind by the ferry, but he’s trapped in another way. He watches his fingers fall to his side, lifeless. And in that moment, he asks for- for forgiveness, questions God who would let him drown one last time. He wonders where his friends are gonna be without him in 10 years. He wonders where May is going to be when they call her to tell her they found the body. He wonders how Mr. Stark is going to remember him, as the loud, overeager kid who got himself killed, as the one who almost took down an entire ferry, as a liar, as a…

Peter’s eyes close. He’s so cold. He’s being reduced to a skeleton, leaving the world the opposite of the way he came into it. He didn’t- his teeth chatter, lungs begin to bust open- expect to be this  _ scared _ . God- God, what’s happening, he’s… he’s got salt on his lips, he whimpers again, into the silent dark of the sea, Peter is-

The brain drifts. The body pickles. Salt and garbage, so much shit that goes into the ocean for no real reason, it soaks onto his skin, clings to him. 

When they pull him out of the water, his suit is a filmy mess, grime caking it. The smell of burning ferry lingers in the air. Tony Stark watches, face drawn. Wind whistles in the air. 

If they play the blame game, which they do, screaming matches outside the hospital, it’s Tony’s fault, then the FBI’s, then the Vulture’s, round and round in circles they go. Blame rests on no one’s shoulders. 

Death didn’t care, the water didn’t, Peter doesn’t, opening his eyes to the wall. There’s a haze on his eyelids. He can’t really see. It’s not- it’s not dark anymore. Huh. 

He turns over, head dipping as he curls into the sheets. The trees outside are brightly green. They pass through the filter on his eyelids and then they are pale, almost imperceptible. Like- like a lizard. A fish? A dog, maybe. With the double eyelids that close twice. His hand shakes. His lungs hurt. They’re a physical body all their own. He needs to have two places to store the pain, his real body and his lungs. 

Are they shrivelled? They feel shrivelled. Figs. 

Lowly, Peter laughs at his own joke. “Peter?” May’s voice is a breath of dawn. 

He’s done this before. Hospital, lungless, asthma attacks and panic attacks, but those ones were at home. He didn’t think they’d happen so often now that he’s a superhero. This, somehow, is worse than those times. He knows the ways that near-death tries to reshape, stubbornly shove you into a more anxious mold. He doesn’t want to change intrinsically. 

Peter’s breath catches, uneven. “I’m awake,” he says slowly. He could spit out the whole Atlantic, if he tried. Flinging one arm over his forehead, he cackles quietly. 

“I don’t want you to keep secrets like that from me again.” 

Peter is a terrible nephew. May is a great aunt. These are facts. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

He feels her palm on his forehead, smooth and warm. It’s been clammy since his eyes burst open. “They think you’re going to make a full recovery. Drowning, though…” 

“It’s no joke.” Ha! He can make a joke out of it. Watch him, next time he’s at school, Peter will find something to say. His eyes burn. It could be the memory seared into his retinas, it could be tears, it could be his body telling him to sleep, again. 

“It’s not.” May pauses. 

Peter’s shoulder lifts. It looks lazy, from the outside, but mostly he’s exhausted. “This is the second time I’ve almost drowned this month, you know that?” he murmurs. “Second time. Third time’s the charm, May, better keep me away from the bathwater.” 

“Christ.” That’s Tony. Peter squints at him through red eyes, sudden guilt making him swallow. His face shines with sweat, he’s feverish. At least a little. 

“Shut up, Stark.” Tell him, May, Peter thinks, blinking at the pair. They’re in a standoff. It doesn’t look strange on them. 

“Yeah, Stark,” Peter says, “Shut up.” Fuck, that,  _ frick _ , that was rude. He’d thought it and then it popped into his mouth and he spit it out. In the absence of clogging water in his lungs, he’ll spit out insults. 

“Are you normally less nice after a near death experience?” 

Peter shakes his head weakly. “Did you get him?” 

“The- the Vulture? Supervillain guy? Not yet.” 

There’s something  _ else  _ Peter will have to take care of. Goddammit, how much-

He’s distracting himself. He is. Peter’s last memories, the ones that weren’t watery, lend a shape of devastation to what Mr. Stark had been saying to him. He’s a failure. Disappointment. Leagues behind the rest, not just a kid but an experiment in how to end a superhero career. He hung up on Mr. Stark 3 times. That’s self sabotage, all right. 

His head is pounding. Vibrating. “I’m sorry,” Stark says, slightly rough. 

_ For what _ ? 

“You did nothing- uh, almost nothing, wrong. It was pretty brave. I mean, stupid, but you’re 15, I kind of expect it. No one died.” 

“I feel like  _ I  _ did,” Peter mutters. He wiggles his fingers. May reaches out, grabs his fingers. 

“You almost did.” 

The room turns silent. There is that feeling again, terror reigning that he’s messed up. Peter needs to get a grip. Grow a backbone, there’s no point in attaching himself to other peoples’ perceptions of him. They’re messed up; he’s messed up. His sense of self dangles from the pinpoint of pride the people around him have, and if it’s taken, he’s going to fall. 

“Okay?” he replies, eventually. “I- I, tell me something I don’t know.” 

“Jesus Christ.” Mr. Stark doesn’t think Peter hears it, but he does. “And that’s my fault,” he goes on, pacing at the front of the room.

“If we’re owning up to our mistakes, I almost crashed a ferry.” His livid muscles scream at him. 

“The Vulture almost crashed a ferry.” Mr. Stark is disdained.    
  
Peter watches him pace at the front of the room, becoming more wide eyed. There is less distaste in his expression now. If he opens his mouth, it’ll let out a sob, a font of tears, maybe. “Peter,” May says, and his attention snaps away. “They’re going to release you in a few hours, now that you’re up.” 

He lets them make conversation, ask him again and again if he needs water, for an hour. He doesn’t need more water. Peter wants to throw up from it. He feels terrible. His muscles scream at him; his lungs are angry. May leaves to take care of paperwork, and he briefly considers the fact that he’s  _ really  _ in it now. In deep shit. 

“Peter,” Mr. Stark says again. “I- I’m trying my best to let this go.” Peter cringes away from the words, staring at his closed fist. He nods weakly. “It’s not easy.” 

“No, I know,” he whispers. 

“I don’t think I can ever apologize enough, kid.” Peter frowns in confusion. “There’s nothing I can do to change what almost happened. But just remember, as you- recover, as you get your strength back. None of it was your fault.” 

“Changing your tune, huh?” Peter replies, even though it feels life changing. He barely knows how to react. Tony Stark isn’t the type to alleviate blame, and Peter Parker doesn’t get that kind of grace. It’s only ever been hard. 

“My tune was wrong, alright? I said terrible shit- stuff, to you. It’s not your fault. It’s never going to be. If anything, it’s mine. You’re too young for this.” 

“In too deep, already,” Peter fires back.  _ Too deep _ . Water, as he plummets down. He’s in too deep. 

“I know.” They paused. Mr. Stark is lingering in the doorway. “I’ll send flowers. A Get Well Soon card. You- you didn’t do good, kid, but it doesn’t matter. You’re alive, that’s more than enough.” The smile he offers isn’t like anything Peter’s seen before. “I’m proud of you.” The words are quiet and they lack much of his usual confidence. 

He doesn’t say his reply out loud, rather, he mouths it once he hears the footsteps disappear.  _ Thank you _ . 

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote the last 2000 words of this in like 3 hours, lightheaded from hunger, and questioning my decision to leave it till the last minute.   
> leave a pity kudos <3 <3 
> 
> anyway also if you wanted to comment it would make my day!!


End file.
